Census: Saskatchewan turnaround, B.C. and Alberta growth lead to rise in West

"It's been a boom year... The name has been changed to Saskaboom."

Photograph by: Troy Fleece
, For Postmedia News

OTTAWA — About 100 years ago, Bill Edwards' grandfather left Ontario and arrived in Saskatoon.

As Edwards puts it, his grandfather saw a bustling city on the verge of something big and decided to stay in what he believed would be the "Chicago of the North."

A century later, Edwards is watching a city going through a boom that has enveloped the province. People are moving into Saskatoon, rather than away.

"Trains everywhere, buildings going up, new art gallery, new riverfront development . . . If you think back 100 years ago, that was happening," Edwards said.

"It's been a boom year," he said. "The name has been changed to Saskaboom."

On Wednesday, census numbers released by Statistics Canada showed the province had a turnaround in its growth rate over the past five years, actually adding people to its population after years of declines.

It's part of a regional growth spurt that reaffirms once again that the West no longer wants in — it is in.

"This is a pretty amazing growth cycle," said Kent Smith-Windsor, the president of the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce and a lifelong Saskatchewanian. "It has the potential to be truly historic."

In a historic first, the percentage of Canadians living in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia surpassed the combined percentage of Atlantic Canada and Quebec.

As Saskatchewan turned its growth around between 2006 and 2011, census data show, Alberta continued to lead the way in terms of percentage of growth in provincial populations, followed by British Columbia.

In third place in percentage provincial growth was Saskatchewan, which increased by 6.7 per cent, slightly above the national average, and topped one million citizens for the first time since 1986, according to Statistics Canada.

More than 10 million Canadians — just less than one-third of the country's population — live in the West. The region added more than 766,000 residents between 2006 and 2011.

Saskatchewan's turnaround is remarkable considering that, in 2006, it was losing residents and had a declining population. After losing about 22,000 Saskatchewanians between 1996 and 2006, the province has added 65,000 new residents over the five years starting in 2006.

Saskatchewan's surge was a result of more immigrants coming to the province — more than 28,000 new immigrants settled there during the five-year period — and 12,000 new residents coming from other provinces, looking for jobs in a now-robust economy.

"Mining, potash, gold, uranium — you name it, it's all firing on all cylinders," said Edwards, who works at an architectural firm that can't keep up with demand, and runs the family business, one of the local funeral homes.

In the mid-1990s, the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce found that while 90 per cent of new university graduates wanted to stay in the region, Smith-Windsor said, they didn't feel there were opportunities for them.

"They always wanted to stay, they just didn't see the opportunity. Now they do," Smith-Windsor said.

The population changes in the West are largely a result of the economic boom prodded along by a resource-rich economy, and a lifestyle that young workers don't feel they can find in Ontario or the East, said Mark Rosenberg, a demographics expert from Queen's University in Kingston, Ont.

"The boom in the Alberta economy in particular and the lifestyle, especially in western Alberta that has the mountains, and B.C., is attracting certainly young Canadians to the West," he said.

Growth in new immigrants coming to the area has changed the social fabric of the province. At one time, Purdy's Chocolate, a 105-year-old, family-owned icon in B.C., wouldn't have thought about selling products for Chinese New Year. Now it does.

The growth in business has been so substantial for the largest retailer in the West with 57 stores that the company is moving east.

"We moved out into Ontario because it seemed like a market where there was an opportunity, because there were no more places for us (in the West)," said Karen Flavelle, the company's president.

In the East, meanwhile, Newfoundland and Labrador has also made a turnaround of sorts, showing population growth for the first time since 1986, the census data show.

Two of its Atlantic Canada neighbours, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, recorded growth rates of about three per cent, up from the previous census.

Manitoba and the Yukon had growth rates that doubled from the previous census period.

Growth in the territories was also strong, except in the Northwest Territories where growth was described in the census as nil. However, Statistics Canada said that result reflected the fact Statistics Canada reached more residents in the territory after missing some in 2001.

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